• Vietnam Trip – Day 7

    15Sep
    Categories: Personal Comments: 0

    We got up early, went to the lobby, found Lao waiting for us, hopped in a taxi, and went down to the river. When we got to the river “dock” (which was a large rock sticking out into the water) we waited for about seven minutes for the ferry (a decrepit boat with a car engine running its jury-rigged propeller) to come back. We hopped the ferry to the other side and then got on a bus. We rode into a residential area of town dominated by square concrete boxes several stories high that looked like a prison and served as apartments. We walked along and all of a sudden we heard singing coming from an open doorway. We went on in the ground level home doorway and found ourselves in the middle of about 35-40 Vietnamese believers extolling dad! We were amazed they were hanging out so openly—neighbors were walking by and you could see straight into the service from the road. They were using amplified instruments and microphones. The speaking could be heard plainly from the sidewalk.


    The little ferry that we rode on across the river


    Lots of bikes crowded on the ferry

    We led worship for a couple of songs with us singing in English and them singing in Vietnamese. After the sermon and the service’s completion, the IGo team, Lao, and a bunch of our Vietnamese friends went half a block down the apartment building to a sidewalk restaurant where we all squatted on little plastic stools around a knee-high table and ate beef and noodles with chopsticks. We had a great time!


    Eating lunch


    An example of the rows and rows of apartment buildings

    We then hopped on a bus and headed down to downtown Saigon. We saw the most famous church in Saigon (a large Catholic cathedral), Vietnamese military headquarters, a large shopping mall, and the “War Remnants Museum”. The War Remnants Museum was by far the most interesting. The outside of the museum was surrounded by captured U.S. military aircraft, tanks, artillery, and sundry armaments. The inside of was a masterful piece of propaganda about the “war crimes” of the “foreign war of aggression against the Vietnamese people”. They portrayed the war as the U.S. versus Vietnam rather than a civil war in which both North and South were receiving foreign assistance—the North from the Soviet Union, China, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and North Korea and the South from the U.S., South Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. It does legitimately (though exaggeratedly) mention damage done by Agent Orange, some of the torture done by South Vietnamese troops, and the rogue My Lai massacre, but it totally ignores the consistent civilian-targeted terrorist actions of the Viet Cong, the Hue massacre, and the systematic torture of P.O.W.’s by the North Vietnamese.


    Catholic cathedral


    Naomi and two sisters


    Playing pool in the mall–pool is huge in Vietnam! There are tables everywhere!


    Vietnamese flag


    The Vietnamese version of the Pentagon


    Group shot


    Tank on the grounds of the “pentagon”


    A captured U.S. plane


    U.S. tank


    American fighter jet and Huey helicopter


    Arlin cringing in anticipation that the drink procured from a streetside vendor would taste like it looked


    Street vendor carefully arranging a pile of roses


    It rained incredibly hard and the streets flooded with a foot of water in some places

    That night we went back to the hotel and then that evening we split into two groups and played games. We had a great time worshiping and interacting with our Vietnamese friends. Afterward we went to a small restaurant and ate noodles for supper.


    Eating supper with the youth

    Meanwhile at the church service, the others had a bit of a more exciting time. A man attending the church service had a stroke right in the middle of the service and had to be taken to the hospital. He and his family are quite poor—the church recently bought them a motorbike so he could earn money by working as a bike taxi—and can’t afford to pay for his care. Unfortunately in Vietnam, hospital care is contingent upon paying for the care upfront, ahead of time. If you don’t have the money, you don’t get taken care of. So the church is helping take care of his hospital care—they had to raid the orphans’ fund to pay his bill.

    Similar Posts:

    Tags: , ,

Leave a Comment

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.

Recent Posts